EPISODE 08

DR. FAHAMU
PECOU

ARTIST, SCHOLAR, AGITATOR

ON COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHERS:

.. a lot of young artists get frustrated when they can’t sell their work for what other well-established artists are selling work for. Then they feel like they failed and give up.

You have to be tenacious. You have to persevere. You have to pace yourself.”

Visual Rope-a-Dope.

In this episode, I finally catch up with longtime friend, Dr. Fahamu Pecou. Fahamu is an artist, scholar, and agitator whose work has been featured in galleries, museums in the backdrops of television shows. His early focus on “making Fahamu Pecou officially the shit” and the extensive series on black masculinity has propelled him to explore what it truly means to be black in America.

We talked about his short stint back in New York after art school, then the need to go back to Atlanta and just want to paint, as well his campaign to become “the $h!t.” I learned how his creative skills progressed over the years, but also that he allowed mistakes to guide his discovery and produce new bodies of work. Then I found out why, after all of his success, he decided to go back to Emory University and get his Ph.D.

What’s next for Fahamu: A look into what Public Scholarship means, bring work to the masses. And his latest show in Atlanta, Do Or Die: Affect Ritual Resistance is on view at the Carlos Museum of Art at Emory University through April 28-2019